A Broken River
by Zenzao
Summary: When Harry Dresden awoke that morning, a distant warning bell was echoing in his head. The kind of thing that usually alerts a Wizard that bad things are lurking in the day ahead. How bad? Try an elder god knocking on his front door, the timeline recently fractured and barely patched back together again, and the threat of the Outer Gates crumbling. Can he find a way to fix it all?


When I woke up this morning, I had a niggling feeling on the back of my mind, almost as if I had left the tap running over night. It wasn't that unusual- a wizard of my caliber could expect such a sense of, let's say paranoid forewarning, as they aged and grew more potent, and gathered up more experience in the way of the world. I had seen some of the Senior Council foretell certain events several hours ahead of the schedule for the rest of us, as an example.

It might have been a result of teaching my apprentice, Molly Carpenter, the subtle variances of magic- illusions, veils, and what shaky meditations as the Grey Council allowed.

And to teach, one has to know, so as a rather basic necessity I had brushed up a few extra points here and there for my own score-sheet while instructing her.

So when I felt that beginning irritability, I'll admit that a slight sense of pride developed right alongside it - I had actually managed to _survive_ long enough in the war with the Red Court of Vampires(and a war that I had started, unfortunately, no matter how worth the results) to start coming into my own ways.

Given how many people, organizations, and deadly forces I had pissed off, that in and of itself was a miracle.

But if I had known what the world had in store for me when I felt that niggling sense of forewarning this morning, I might just have shoved my head back under the pillow and called in a sick day.

Mouse greeted me almost as soon as I stumbled out of the bathroom and into the kitchen some minutes later, all mastiff and slobbering kisses as I elbowed the fridge open and stared blandly at the spartan shelving.

"Okay, okay," I placated the Foo dog blearily, snagging a slice of two days old pizza from Molly's celebratory lesson in between my teeth to keep the slobber off of it,

A minute later and a fresh bowl of pooch chow filled in Mouse's bowl, and my hands were washed clean enough to handle the cold, slightly hard around the edges snack properly.

I dropped down onto my couch and began to chow down on breakfast while that feeling slowly simmered in the background, blending in with the tiredness where it should have instead blared aloud like a klaxon. As I finished off the last bite, a steady knock reverberated off of my fortified front door.

Mouse lifted his shaggy head from the nearly empty dish before him and let out with a low, steady sort of growl.

When Mouse growled, I paid attention. As a Foo dog, he could sense things of a spiritual nature, and in my time, I had learned all too well that things of a spiritual nature were almost universally a pain in the ass.

Standing up and striding back into my bedroom, I shoved on my duster and a pair of the cleanest pants around, grabbed my worn black staff and ruby-crested pentacle amulet, and began mentally running through the spells needed to vaporize any ghoul or vampire lurking outside of my threshold.

Carefully nudging aside the wards set in place to reduce any malicious figure into a charred crisp rather than dismantle them entirely, I gripped the edge of the door and lugged it back with a quiet grunt of effort, coming to a stop once I could level my staff easily through the gap.

I stared out and looked around for whoever was responsible, and found the other figure both lacking in concern for its state and all the more so awkward in appearance for it.

An old black and white suit, faded around the edges if still quite crisp and clean in the middle, leaned against the wall in plain aim of my staff, and filling it in was a male figure of possibly-Incan heritage.

White feathers wrapped around one wrist in a similar manner to my shield-bracelet, while the dark toned skin beneath it was relatively smooth and unmarred by any particular signs of age. Ruffled black hair swept back in an oddly similar manner. I spared the smouldering gaze- literally, I might add, given the wisps of smoke emerging from the corners - a brief examination, and found the dark black eyes too wide for comfort, though not quite fully obscuring the entire sclera.

_No attempt to hide what it is, then,_ I thought uneasily. Behind me, unheard, Mouse had approached and he stuck his shaggy head around my hip, allowing his wet nose and a good portion of his muzzle out into the same space my staff occupied, as if he could attack just as quickly or easily.

_Good pooch,_ I thought and had to resist smirking at the corners. The figure spared the Foo dog a nominal glance and smiled. Then he pushed off from the wall with his shoulders and settled into a comfortable looking slouch.

"Mister Dresden and Mouse, I presume. May I come in?" He asked calmly and politely.

The quiet whine in the back of my skull pitched a thought to burn the creature to ashes, but I checked the motion before it could manifest, and instead asked, "I wouldn't particularly appreciate it, what with my disadvantage and all." I couldn't resist the smirk this time as the creature tilted its head back in apparent puzzlement.

"Your disadvantage? You are behind fully capable wards, established by the _Wardlords of Asgard_ itself, Mister Dresden. You are among the top forty most powerful Grey Council members in existence at any given moment. You possess effluent control over an esteemed Foo dog and figure of great importance. What, prey do tell, disadvantage do you possess against _me_?" He questioned, taken aback.

I shrugged, displaying disinterest to hide the wave of unease that rippled through my frame. _No one, barring the Valkyrie themselves, should have known about the true strength behind my wards._

"You know more than enough about myself, stranger, and I've got next to nothing about you in turn. And between you and me, the last guy to try coming in without answering my terms lost the better part of his two-block zombie horde."

His forehead creased as he frowned at me. "Fair enough, Mister Dresden," he answered mildly. Then he reached forward with supernatural speed and tapped the end of my staff in little more than a flicker of displaced light.

Before I could consciously decide to act, the wood dissolved into tens of thousands of useless grain, and they all fell to the ground over the next few seconds. The amulet fell neatly into his own hand.

I flinched back against the action as my main conduit of will was utterly ruined, almost stumbling over Mouse's heavy form, and the creature outside of my front door raised the other hand more naturally up to its lips.

I scrambled to reach my blasting rod, reluctant to delve into the particulars of magic without at least _something_ to solidify its tenacious hold in reality, as he coughed into his hand.

A wave of sonic energy slammed through the open air and into my eardrums even as I began to mentally rally the words to ignite him down to the fibers of his being, and it was so intense that it knocked me off of my feet.

Mouse chuffed painfully, but he moved with an agile grace I had only occasionally seen him perform over the years, and before I had even hit the cold carpet he had moved to stand over my body protectively.

Of course, I only realized any of this about three seconds later, stunned as I was and dripping blood out of one ear.

Not a moment later and my roughly five-hundred pound steel and iron door was flung open as if it weighed no more than a handkerchief, the metal hinges squealing in protest from the stress.

Frankly, I was surprised they didn't break altogether.

"Mister Dresden, suffice it to say that if I wanted you dead, I would not have needed to approach and ask your permission. I presume that this display is enough to convince you that I am more than your atypical, run-of-the-mill vampire or wyldfae of Faerie." He said in the same mild tone, having not moved again from his position.

I raised a wary hand to my bleeding ears and stared around Mouse's side, feeling an ache in my bones and the warning siren in my head suddenly quite clearly, screaming on high alert.

With my other hand I finally found my blasting rod, but the likelihood of scorching my dog's underside in the process kept me from thinking about the prospect of heavy-hitting magic too much, and slowly I ducked my head back beneath his hind-legs and scooted into a clearer path.

"Maybe," I conceded his point at last, winching at how my tone came out- _one out of two broken eardrums will do that to a guy_ - and shrugged to get the tension in my shoulders to settle down. I'd start healing them once I was done with whoever this was. "But you still have me at a loss for your name. And I'd rather you didn't screech it at me, thanks," my face flexed tautly as another flash of pain ran up my hip to my neck, confirming that at least one if not several muscles had been pulled or else stretched out of place by the harsh landing.

A tired sigh escaped his lips, then. "Why is it so that you mortals _always_ beat around the bush? For Quetzalcoatl's sake, _ask_ a straight-forward question next time!" He said with a lance of frustration entering his tone, shifting his posture. "You may call me _Khronos_, Harry Dresden. And I have need of your services."

I blinked, twice, at his declaration. It isn't often that a guy just casually introduces himself as a deity from a long-diminished culture. It's even less often that he asks for your help, and then it ends on a happy and joyous note for the both of you.

Slowly coming up to my feet, I leveled him a wary look and opened my mouth to respond. "I'm listening. What do you want?"

I'd have phrased it nicer, but who am I kidding; I could sooner keep the insolence from my tone as the moon could refuse to rise every evening.

Khronos spared me a bland look and motioned one hand around himself slowly, and then arched an eyebrow, as if saying _Out here? Are you serious?_

"Yessir I am. You do not have my permission to cross my threshold until I've heard, _in normal human octaves_, exactly what it is that you are expecting me to perform for you yourself." I answered his unspoken question without a drop of sarcasm- guess the moon won't be rising tonight, after all.

Something inhuman passed across his features, a flat, dark look, seeming to reshape how his face molded together.

Then it was gone and he stepped forward and _across my threshold_ as if it was nonexistent. And it most assuredly was not, given all of the hours and days I had toiled to make sure this place was as much a _home_ in the proper sense as any other in the world.

"Mister Dresden, despite my name and its role in history, I do _not_ have unlimited time at my side to spare with fencing words at one another like this. The window to interfere grows smaller with every minute of time that passes forward. Do you understand me?" He asked sharply.

I narrowed my eyes at his own tone. "What do you want?" I repeated.

One hand clenched into a fist, but he pressed his emotions back down under the mask he wore, and with a gesture the door at his back slammed closed again. With that done Khronos stared back at me with those too-wide pupils for several seconds, as if weighing his words before delivering them.

"As you are well aware, their is no law prohibiting transition throughout the flow of time. It is, I believe your kind views, a task deemed more or less futile due to the weight and speed with which the current runs. You would need a significant degree of opposite and surpassing strength to wade through it."

I nodded once. A mortal wizard could, at best, and at the risk of burning their life out for it as all too many hopeless schmucks had proven throughout history, make a localized journey backwards or forwards in time to within about fifteen minutes, provided you had enough juice built up to draw upon.

It took less to speed your perception of time up or slow it down rather than try to overcome it altogether, but I could manage a jump to within a few minutes, provided Demonreach was willing to comply and supply the necessary _oomph_.

"Unlike you mortals, our kind have a firmer understanding. My brethren and I are more than capable of sundering the current flow and forcing it unto a separate path- which we have already done all too often. Do you understand?" He asked.

"No." I answered simply. His face flitted through that dark, subhuman expression again, but Mouse let out a low growl in the back of his throat, and the deity's eyes locked onto my Foo dog's for a long moment.

Then he exhaled tiredly and leaned against the steel door. I frowned.

"Say that you and yours decided to divert a river, and your first decision is to create a dam to block it. The river is soon caught up and overflowing, if done improperly, and spills back along the way that it came to some degree. Drainage ditches are created to divert some of the river aside, but a lack of attention insures that the ditch is filled to the brim before it is ready, and soon runs freely over the lay of the land. Before you can stop it, the land is flooded, taking with it so many lives, and the only choice is to destroy what is built of the dam to return the river to its natural course in the hope of releasing the land of its damage. To some degree the flood has already reentered into the empty river bed, but as the water level slowly diminishes, pockets and pools and even perhaps a lake or two are left standing behind, alone, separated. Due to the casualties already sustained, you lack the necessary force to remove these unsightly and wasteful pools, and over time, they stagnate and decay, and disease accumulates within them that spreads to the surrounding area."

Khronos managed to say all of that without once needing to stop and breath, and I gaped at him, even as my mind processed his message and the underlying point. After a few seconds I got it. "You're saying that time has been broken up like that?" I asked him.

The deity nodded. "I am alone among my kind these days, Harry Dresden. There is little enough that I may do about this as such, though I may still step upon the surface of time and trek back and forth as an observer."

"So what happens when a..." I struggled to wrap my mind around the terms he had used to describe time, and it just wouldn't work, despite his effort at analogues. "A pocket of time stagnates? When it rots?" I finally asked.

Khronos' expression darkened, and this time he did nothing to try and return it to normal, and even Mouse shifted uneasily.

"Reality is reshaped, and holes in the Outer Gates appear. Holes through which the Outsiders may freely enter. If they are not closed up before much longer, then more than merely the earth shall be lost, and I can do nothing but watch as the end approaches from on nigh. You have power over them, and I can help to push you along like a stone skipping upon a lake, if you are willing."

Before he had even finished speaking I felt the instinctive siren in my head reach its fever pitch, and I clutched at my blasting rod in lieu of my staff. "How do you know that?" I demanded quietly. Few enough things are capable of capturing my attention so thoroughly, but my past, my history with _He Who Walks Behind_, rank up near the very top.

"Before we disrupted the timeline, there were many children such as you born under the right circumstances, but lacking the prowess and training to bring them to bare. I suspect that their eradication and the resultant flaws, the chaos in the river, that followed our effort were deliberately conducted." He paused, and I steadied my will.

"How do you know?" I repeated no less quietly and fiercely.

His fingers tightened into a fist and his posture stiffened, but he relaxed again almost as soon. "You are insufferable, Mister Dresden. I commend you on being straight-forward with your questions." He said instead of answering me.

I met his gaze levelly. "How?"

"By the time I realized our efforts were being sabotaged, it was too late. Most of what I foresaw occurring as a result of the flooding came too late to kill the traitors _and_ spare at least one who could rectify the damages. Your life, Mister Dresden, is no longer on the path as it was meant to be; choices by those _around_ you, and choices committed _by_ you, have altered. There was simply no other way for me to preserve your life and return time to its original course."

Khronos lifted a hand almost lazily and gestured around the room. "You stand here upon your own merits, Harry Dresden. You have fought and, at times, gained an alliance with most of the known jurisdictions of the Nevernever that still trespass upon the waking world. You hold a pillar of inner strength so drastic that my enemies as much as your own have sought to kill you with increasingly dire effort even so far back as the _womb_."

"As it stands, though certain events may still have a similar bearing, you are different now than you were before our intervention. Much of this is an effort of necessity to see you still breathing until we could meet one another, here, now."

I listened to him in silence, but my fury was bristling and bubbling beneath the surface. I had no reason to believe the deity, none at all to trust him, but as he spoke I began to have flashes of clarity- at several points in my life to date, I've felt a sense of... _indecision_.

What had seemed to make sense between one moment and the next fell upon gnawing doubt, forcing me to make a split-second choice between following through or seeking out alternative measures.

I bared my teeth in a contained bark of humorless laughter.

"So tell me, then, manipular of time; was it you that swayed me away from bargaining with the Winter Queen six years ago? Was it you that stayed my hand against Baroness Bianca ten years prior? Was it _you_ that convinced me to go to Saint Mary's instead of a convenience store as I fled from Justin DuMorne!?" My voice grew in pitch and volume as I spoke, and my anger began to surge toward the surface.

There was something about being jerked around by a greater power that any mortal should resist, and I did not have the patience needed to stand around and listen to any more. As far as I was concerned, Khronos had screwed around and settled a noose around my neck for it. I had enough targets to watch out for without some kind of shadow-council operating from within the currents of time itself!

He stopped me with a simple answer.

"Yes."

My blasting rod snapped in half beneath the pressure I had exerted against it, and the noise floored me temporarily. I jerked my head down and stared at the crumbling, slightly burning shards of wood, and my fingers released their death-grip and let the rest of the timbers float down.

He said without so much as a hint of apology in his tone, "I have changed the course of your own personal history in order to spare your life, so that _all_ _life_ in the worlds may be spared in return. And yes, the fault is upon my own shoulders for not foreseeing the guile and desperation of those capable of tearing the _Names_ from my brethren ahead of our efforts."

A grimace passed across my face and Mouse turned around, nosing my primary hand. It was numbing up from the backlash of energy released by the broken blasting rod.

I raised the other to press against the shaggy dogkylosaur's head, gathering in a calm breath and taking reassurance from his presence.

It would have to do until Susan and Maggie returned.

Then I looked back at Khronos face.

"The last time I had to face an Outsider, I had a Knight of the Cross at my side, and barely enough power to protect the both of us. Since then I've held my own in struggle after struggle, and barely come out alive for it, but you were probably right there, prodding the strings. I can't get over that, but I can see the reason," I said slowly.

It wasn't easy to get a clamp down upon my anger, but I forced myself to do so. When I truly lost control... things got _ugly_. For _everyone_.

So when I continued my words came out slowly and carefully. "What do you want me to do?" I asked him.

Khronos stood up right. "I want you to fix our problems. Drain the broken ponds and pools of time back into the rightful source before they can stagnate any further."

I waved an impatient hand. "_How_?"

"I may not be capable of interfering directly, not the least of which being that those who instigated this chaos in the first place will be watching for my presence from now on, but I can still walk atop the currents. Think of yourself as a stone about to be skipped across the surface by my hand. You will break away from this timeline and crash into an alternative reality, Harry Dresden."

Khronos lifted a hand to his mouth and coughed again, his chest rumbling, and another sonic wave nearly threw me back to the floor again. This time I braced my legs and leaned against Mouse for support, and the impact though jarring did not do anything particularly painful- aside from the wince and renewal of blood leaking out of a busted eardrum twice-over.

I turned my good ear to him with a growl of frustration, and he held up the same hand in a placating gesture. "My apologies, Harry Dresden. I am not as... capable as I would have preferred. It would be best if we set this journey off as quickly as possible."

"You still haven't told me how to drain the... pocket of time back to normal." I stated lowly.

Khronos nodded and dug one hand into a pocket. When his fingers emerged he held up a small hourglass wrapped up in a series of rings, each a slightly different color and inscribed in almost microscopic runes that were too diminutive to make out.

The air grew heavy as he offered it over to me. "What is that?"

"The object initially utilized to divert the river. It has enough power suffused to bleed the pool back into the main stream anew, but you _must_ find the proper point in which to activate it. If you do not, then the effort will fail and discharge a portion of its limited strength."

I frowned and took it from him, weighing the glass and metal frame. It seemed to exude a field of gravity about itself, amplifying what should have been a two pound trinket into something twenty-times as heavy. I very nearly dropped it to the floor, and my fingers clamped down tightly even as my whole arm went slack.

"Hells bells," I swore quietly, staring down at it with wide eyes. "How do you expect me to lug this thing around?"

The deity frowned at me. "Draw upon the local stores of earth energy inherit across the lay of the land, Harry Dresden. You have done this often enough."

"No I haven't. I've only ever used De-" I cut myself off before I named the dark lei line, swallowing the words.

Khronos sighed. "Time is fleeting, and we can not afford to spend any more of it like this. I can not give you power for nothing, but knowledge... yes, I've enough left to do that much." Stepping closer to me he moved with that supernatural speed, and both hands pressed against my shoulders before I could stop him.

We fell into the hole into the Nevernever like that, and my brain trembled as information I had never had reason to test outside of Demonreach surged to the forefront of my mind; seeing _how_ to draw from the nearest lei line, even if it was a hundred miles away. _Why_ it should be done at certain points and not at others. _When_ to cut myself off from it to avoid burning myself out...

* * *

**Chapter One concluded.**

* * *

**Initially this was the first version of the later-adapted _Gotta Get Back in Time_ posted in the DLP Dresden Work by Author months ago. Both were written at roughly the same period last year, and I can't tell you how many snippets and revisions and retries I went through just to get them each into a satisfying state. I'm still not entirely sold on this one, but still. So, opinions?  
**


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